One Fish, Two Fish, Old Fish, New Fish

Most of us have enough trouble figuring out what we did yesterday, let alone what happened 375 million years ago. Ted Daeschler, PhD, on the other hand, specializes in making sense of the dusty, the musty and the exceptionally old (i.e. fossils). Associate professor at Drexel and associate curator and VP at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Daeschler and his colleagues unearthed a new fossilized fish species in the Canadian Arctic this spring. Dubbed Holoptychius bergmanni (or “The Bergmeister” for laypeople), the lobe-finned fish is evidence of the evolutionary transition from finned to limbed vertebrates. Daeschler—with his flair for fishy finds—was also part of the same team that discovered Tiktaalik rosea back in 2006, a shallow-water dwelling “fishapod” (think: “fish with four legs”) that provides the clearest evidence of the species’ evolution from water inhabitant to land resident. Devonian surf and turf, anyone?

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Dean’s Note

Four years ago, President Fry charged the University with becoming the most civically engaged in the nation. As you read through the pages of Ask, you’ll see that’s a challenge we’ve taken very seriously in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Editor’s Note

My husband and I traveled to Spain for the first time in September. After a long flight, a long layover and a long train ride, we stepped out into the dusty, vineyard- filled landscape of the small town of Haro.

The station was deserted — not a person, not a car, not a sound except the clicking wheels of our suitcases across the sidewalk.